A Walk In The Cold
by Princesa7
Summary: Ichigo and Orihime take a walk around the block, contemplating winter, hot chocolate, and...pigeons? Oh yus. IchiHime, goofy!Orihime alert. lol yeah, I'm still alive everyone


**Hime:** Ohoho, lookit me, posting here, like I have anything important to contribute to the world of fanfiction. 3 Naw, don't worry, I have a lot of stuff. NOW, if I can get down to putting it into a little file, clicking Save, then uploading them, that's another story...I'll try my bestest I thought this up, while taking a walk a few weeks ago. It is indeed, very cold. D: Buh.

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It was cold outside, not to mention windy, windy to the point that one's hair flew every which way, made one stumble, and maybe even blew a leaf or two in your face. If you were in a car, you would feel it shake, it was _that_ windy.

For Orihime, it was perfect.

Okay, her hair got in her eyes sometimes, so she pulled It back. It was cold, well she had a sweater on didn't she? Yeah, she tripped a few times, but this wasn't new so no one really paid much attention to that. And if a leaf hit her in the face, she'd giggle and examine it to see if it was an "interesting leaf."

For Ichigo, it was torment. His fingers, nose, and cheeks went numb, and while his short hair gave him little trouble, tripping wasn't really something he often did, and he'd been stumbling too much that day to keep his image labeled as calm and coordinated.

But you know, when Orihime looks you in the eyes like going with her for a walk on a day like this is the most important thing in the world to her, well goddamn, you _can't say no. _

So there he was, walking alongside the person he probably loved most in the entire universe, and he was miserable.

Ichigo stuffed his gloved hands into his pockets, and hunched his back to bunch his black trench coat further up on his shoulders. The bright red scarf Hime had made for him didn't really do much more than flap in the wind and look kind of cute perhaps, but he wore it anyway on the off chance that it made his body 1 warmer somehow. He glanced at Hime, who seemed perfectly content in blue jeans, a black sweater with an obnoxious bunny on the front, and sneakers. No gloves, no coat, no scarf, no hat, he wondered if perhaps it had finally happened; her brain had frozen, but no. She felt his eyes and turned to him, giving him that sunshine smile that, even in this weather, inspired a spark of warmth that he tried to cling to.

Then she got that matter-of-fact look, and spread her arms out to either side as if trying to balance, but was really just a bored gesture. "You know, you shouldn't look that way!"

Ichigo blinked, actually perplexed enough to quickly glance at himself in a half-frozen puddle as they passed it by. "What are you going on about?" He gave her a suspicious stare out of the corner of his eyes.

She giggled, stepping over each brown, red, or yellow leaf in her way, careful not to crush any. "_That_ way. You know! You look unhappy." She mimicked his indifferent stare, but it only made her look silly instead of truly put off.

"Ah, right." He nodded and looked up at the gray sky above them. It would probably snow this week, if not tonight. He'd much rather be in front of the fire at home, or even better, _in bed._ They had had such a nice morning too, wrapped up tight in that fuzzy blanket she picked and he actually liked so you couldn't get a hair between them. _Exactly_ how he wanted it, and he'd be damned if she was going to get him to do this every day. But those eyes…

"Ichi! And you say I day-dream." The red-head wagged a finger at him, a slightly blue finger, he noticed. Crazy girl; and they weren't even close to the house yet. Ichigo sighed and took of his gloves.

"You do day-dream, and I don't want any arguments on _that_ subject, or on this." He grabbed her hands and forced the brown leather gloves on them, making sure each finger was in right, before shoving his back into his pockets.

She blinked, looked at her hands like they were objects she'd never seen before. Her eyes were curious again. "Well what was that for?" She pouted.

If his hands weren't so damn cold he would have smacked his own head, but in this case he only rolled his eyes. Fuck, even those were cold, somehow. "So your hands don't fall off of course. I'm gonna make good on my threat to put you in a plastic bubble one day, and_climate controlled."_

"Oh, you're no fun." But the pout disappeared a split-second later, and she was smiling contently again. Ichigo snorted inside, but felt affectionate nonetheless. So easy to please, that girl. They walked in silence for a little while, each of their minds wandering elsewhere. Orihime wondering about the chicken, cheese, noodle, and broccoli dinner she was going to make, and Ichigo contemplating which particular nightgown Hime would look the cutest in. That green plaid one had sleeves that almost reached her knees, and the collar always slipped off one shoulder and made him melt inside, but that peach colored see-through one…

"But you really shouldn't."

"What?" He turned his head, slightly miffed at the interruption even though it was by the girl he was fantasizing about anyway.

"Have that look. Aren't you happy?"

This time he _did_ hit his forehead. "Hime…"

"I_know_ you frown a lot, but that's only when you don't care or aren't happy right? But when you _are_ happy, you smile! You should be happy enough right now, I think."

"Oh should I?" He chuckled; if she had her way, he'd _always_ be smiling…not to mention always clad in something tight and revealing and definitely yaoi-thought-evoking, but this wasn't the time for_that_ fantasy of her mind to be contemplated.

"Yes, you should." They turned a corner, and her head just brushed under the trailing white leaves of what looked like a small willow, but of course Ichigo had to step off the sidewalk to avoid it. She walked a bit closer to him as he stepped back up from the curb. "Because…it is winter, so it'll be Christmas! But before that, it'll just be really cold, and it'll snow, and it will look really gray outside everywhere you look, and you'll just _hate_ going outside for even a few seconds, and you'll think the sun might as well just not come up every morning for all the good it's doing, and it might even _rain_ along with the snow but it won't be the warm soft kind, it'll be like cold little needle-points, and---"

"Hime…I'm going to die. Please, just stop." During that entire description of his least favorite season, Ichigo had been growing colder and colder and was _certain_ that frost was forming on every individual hair on his body.

"But don't you get it? It's _winter!"_

"Oh I get it alright." They turned another corner, a a small group of birds launched themselves from the yard they passed.

Hime blinked up at them for a minute, watching them fly farther away. "Oh no!"

"What?"

"I wonder if the birds are cold!" She had such a pitiful expression on her face, Ichigo didn't know whether to be amazed or disturbed by her level of sympathy, but shoved that aside for the moment. "Birds migrate in the winter you know."

"What?!"

"What?"

"I totally forgot that! How sad!" Orihime was almost in tears, cute chibi tears perhaps, but tears nonetheless. "We won't get to wake up to their singing, and I won't have them to sit outside and talk with when I eat breakfast, or say hello too when I go for walks."

And as usual, Ichigo was baffled as one of the few remaining robins that lived on their block skimmed by them after she said this, perching in a tree nearby and staring fixatedly at Orihime, who beamed at it, then waved as it flew away. Just another one of those weird things that he _really_ should be used to by now.

"Well the birds come back in the spring, and that makes it even more special okay?" he said, trying his best to be convincing and cheer her up even though he didn't see bird migration as much of a problem.

"I guess," she said, leaning into his shoulder more.

Grasping at air, Ichigo spied a gray bird perched upon a streetlight. "There, see? Pigeons don't go anywhere you know."

"That's right!" Orihime giggled and Ichigo's ego grew a little. "As long as they're warm though; hmm, maybe we should invent some kind of pigeon sweater, a whole pigeon clothing line. We can call it Silver Feathers, but with some funky French accent you know? So people know it's special, but then again I don't think anyone would want to wear a bird's clothes. They'd rip! And I don't think the pigeon who bought them would be very happy about that, and might get his blue jay, robin, and sparrow friends to beat them up! Then it'd be a war! We have to help the birds Ichigo!" She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and flailed her arms, eyes a bit dazed, and Ichigo stood there and scratched his nose, amused and disturbed but _goddamn_ it was cute.

"Hime, you're adorable and I love you, but keep walking please. I'd like to get back to the house."

"Oh." She blinked, put one finger on her chin, and kept walking like she'd never said a word.

Ichigo grabbed and held her hand just in case she was continuing with her pigeon fantasy in her head, so she wouldn't walk into a pole. He wasn't even being sarcastic; he needed to take said objects into account when walking with Hime, for her sake, and sometimes his own.

To prevent the world from ever seeing a pigeon in a neon pink sweater and boots, he tried to distract her. "I thought you liked the cold though; you sure as heck seem to love everything else that goes wrong in this whether."

Orihime looked stunned that he could even say such a thing. "It's not wrong though! How could you even think so? It's just…different, and besides, it's not as much fun to cuddle under a blanket in front of a fire in fuzzy pajamas with the heat turned on when it's summer-time is it? _Especially_ if you have hot chocolate. You know the kind, with the little marshmallow bunnies in it? We have that kind and I was going to make some with dinner---"

Ichigo flung the door open, grabbed her hand and pulled her inside. Little bunnies or not, he wanted hot chocolate, and a little Hime drizzled on top never hurt...

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**Hime:** Gawd that ending sucked worse than the thought of Grimmjow's released form falling prey to the Quality Freaking Animation curse that Bleach seems to be suffering from. XD DON'T YOU DARE DISGRACE GRIMM-KITTY WITH YOUR 2$ ANIMATION DAMNIT.


End file.
